French Government Group Wants Europe To Join 2nd Space Race

A French parliamentary group said
China’s recent anti-satellite demonstrations, plus Chinese and Indian plans for
lunar exploration, are clear signs that a second global space race has begun
and that Europe should join it.

In a report
issued Feb. 7, the French Parliamentary Office for the Evaluation of Scientific
and Technological Choices makes a series of proposals, some of them specific, to
reinvigorate Europe’s civil and military space policy.

Among the
50 proposals:

Sanctions
should be imposed on any European government that does not give preference
to European launch vehicles for its government civil and military
satellites.

France
should begin preparing nuclear-powered satellites to permit deep-space
exploration, using expertise at the French Atomic Energy Commission and in
French industry.

Europe’s
heavy-lift Ariane 5 rocket should be made capable of launching astronauts
within five years.

Managers
of Europe’s Galileo satellite-navigation project should engage in negotiations
with the NATO alliance on how Galileo’s encrypted, government-only signal
should be used and protected.

France
and other European governments should give assistance to companies that
propose to develop suborbital flight systems designed to create a
space-tourism industry.

The
parliamentary group views the growing space budgets of the United States, China,
India and Russia in particular as confirmation that space remains a realm of strategic
competition with multiple military and commercial applications.

Europe,
they say, is losing ground to these nations and is at risk of becoming a space
also-ran if it does not redouble its financial effort and end duplication among
individual European nations. The report says Europe’s NATO members should set a
goal of making their existing military satellite telecommunications systems
interoperable within two years. Britain, France, Germany, Italy and Spain operate
independent systems and sometimes compete with each other for business.

The
principal authors of the report are Christian Cabal, a member of France’s National
Assembly; and Sen. Henri Revol. Both have long been active in promoting French
and European space investment, saying Europe should not allow itself to fall too
far behind the United States.

But it is
the recent acceleration of investment in China and India, and the reawakening
of Russia’s space sector — the authors say Russia has multiplied space spending
by 10 since 1999 — that is the focus of the report.

The
report’s one-paragraph introduction is an example. It mentions the following
recent developments: The U.S. Vision for Space
Exploration’s goal of a lunar base by 2020; China’s manned space flights; Chinese
and Indian plans for lunar exploration; the successful atmospheric re-entry and
recovery of an Indian orbital capsule; China’s alleged use of a laser to
illuminate a U.S. military satellite; and China’s mid-January use of a ground-based missile to destroy a retired Chinese
satellite.

Member
governments of the European Space Agency (ESA) agreed in December 2005 to give
a “preference” to European rockets — Ariane 5 and the future medium- and
light-class Soyuz and Vega vehicles — whenever technically and financially possible.
They stopped short of adopting a French proposal for stronger language.

ESA also has been considering the purchase
of Russian nuclear-heating technology for Europe’s Mars exploration program. ESA
science managers have said nuclear-propulsion technology
should be considered for satellites traveling too far from the sun to rely on
solar power. But the subject remains sensitive in Europe and ESA has not agreed
to a full-scale nuclear-propulsion research effort.

The French
parliamentary group proposes that France’s Atomic Energy Commission begin such
work in cooperation with industry.